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That we are having this conversation in March is certainly more than Brendan Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello and the rest of the Maple Leaf brain trust could have hoped for in their second full season of breathing life back into the hockey club.

Yes, we are talking playoffs, and whether or not the Leafs can get there. Only once in a dozen years have the Leafs been invited to the springtime dance, so this discussion may be a bit novel to some of our younger readers. It’s going to be tight, that’s for sure, a battle between the Leafs, Boston, the New York Islanders and Florida for either the third playoff spot in the Atlantic Division or the final wild-card position in the Eastern Conference.

Tampa Bay and Philadelphia aren’t totally out of it either. So you could have six teams fighting for two spots and four left on the outside looking in.

The acquisitions of Brian Boyle and Eric Fehr at the trade deadline didn’t significantly alter the Leaf roster. Boyle has already helped a bit in a fourth-line/faceoff role, while Fehr hasn’t yet been pressed into duty, suggesting the transaction that brought him to Toronto from Pittsburgh was really mostly about the fourth-round draft pick the Leafs picked up for giving the Penguins some salary relief they then used to acquire defenceman Mark Streit.

So this is what Mike Babcock has to work with. No more dreaming about adding a top-four defenceman. No more wondering what James van Riemsdyk might fetch in a trade.

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After playing three games in four nights in California, and gaining only a single point in the standings, the Leafs now face a much more forgiving schedule for the next 10 days — 10 days that will likely determine whether they can qualify for post-season play.

This is the second major chance they’ve had to vault themselves into a preferred position in the standings. At one point last month, they had five games in hand on the Bruins, but Boston fired coach Claude Julien, replaced him with Bruce Cassidy and caught fire. The Leafs, meanwhile, stumbled and stopped scoring goals, and all those games in hand added up to not very much at all.

Now, a friendlier schedule beckons. It starts with Detroit at home on Tuesday and Philadelphia on Thursday, then a visit to Raleigh on Saturday to face the Carolina Hurricanes.

That’s a comfortable three games against non-playoff teams spaced out over five days with only a short flight to North Carolina, about as relaxed a schedule as you can get these days in the NHL without a bye week. Anything less than four points for the Leafs in those games, you have to believe, would spell trouble, while six points would get this team on a roll again.

The Leafs then get two more days off before playing the Panthers in Sunrise, Fla., on Tuesday, which might be a pivotal game. After another day off, they’ll get the Lightning in Tampa on Thursday. On March 18, it gets tougher again with a home match against Chicago, so it’s those preceding five games — Detroit, Philly, Carolina, Florida and Tampa — that seem likely to determine Toronto’s fate.

Anything less than seven of a possible 10 points could doom Toronto. A win over the Panthers next Tuesday could be critical, and the Leafs have two more games against the team that acquired Thomas Vanek to play saviour. The Leafs would be well advised to get what they need to get done before the final week of the schedule when they play Washington, Pittsburgh and Columbus.

Given that few expected last year’s 30th-place finishers to be in this position at this juncture of the season, it’s really all good for the Leafs. Still, if you have a competitive bone in your body as an athlete, you quickly skip past those autumn expectations and get excited about being one of the 16 teams to get to the Stanley Cup prom.

Right now, after all seven Canadian teams missed the post-season last year, it appears Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton and red-hot Calgary will make playoffs. The Leafs would love to go from dead last to being the fifth qualifier from the Great White North.

To do that, Frederik Andersen needs to get hot and the power play needs to hit its stride again. But it’s also fair to suggest that this is the first opportunity for Auston Matthews to make a competitive statement for the team he’s expected to lead for the next decade.

By next fall, it seems quite likely Matthews will be the Leaf captain. As a 19-year-old rookie, he’s been mostly splendid with 31 goals. This is a league more about what attackers can do from the dots down, which makes Matthews perfect for the times, because that’s where he’s at his best.

He’s getting the more accomplished enemy checkers now, and that has slowed his production some. But great players play through that, and great players sometimes, if not all the time, lift their team on their shoulders and get them to where they want to go.

A superb final 18 games from Matthews might just do that for the Leafs. It might also get him the Calder Trophy, with Winnipeg sniper Patrik Laine (more goals and points, fewer games) likely having caught the eye of the majority of Calder voters for the moment with his scoring exploits.

Matthews, shouldering defensive and faceoff responsibilities that Laine does not, can still persuade voters with a dominant offensive finish to the season, particularly if it gets the Leafs into the playoffs while the Jets are left out.

If that happens, even hardcore Manitoba fans might have to tip their hats to Toronto’s Desert Dynamo.

Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.

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